Friday, June 23, 2006

On this day in 1633, Galileo Galilei was forced by the Catholic Church to recant his endorsement of Nicolaus Copernicus’ claim that the earth revolves around the sun. He was threatened with torture and sentenced to life in prison, finally ending up with a life sentence of house arrest after promising never to mention his ideas ever again.

How far we have come. Today, nobody gets tortured and the people in power embrace science… just not in America.

Legend has it that Galileo got his sentence commuted to house arrest by keeping his cool, but never truly abandoning his beliefs. "Eppur si muove," he supposedly said of the earth. "And yet it does move."